Seo Writing Guidelines: How to Write Content that will rank on Search Engines

  If you want to know how to write Content that will rank on search engines then you must master seo writing guidelines,

Writing with SEO guidelines involves creating content for user consumption/ engagement and search engines. 

Writing content for users’ consumption implies crafting engaging and captivating content to satisfy users’ intents, needs and curiosity. Your content should be able to answer the questions they have in mind.

Also, when you write content for search engines, you must comply with search engine guidelines to get the algorithm to work in your favor and push your content to the top.

Without these two factors in mind, your content will never appear on search engines, no matter how hard you work and the effort you put into creating it. 

Most writers make the mistake of spending too much time creating content to show off their expertise and satisfy their curiosity rather than focusing on the audience’s needs and Google search results.

Before writing your content, you need to conduct keyword research to determine whether it will be rankable. Once this is ascertained, you can proceed with writing it.

Reading this blog post will teach you how to write content that satisfies users’ intentions and meets Google writing standards. Make sure you continue to the end.

How to Write Content that will rank high on search engines.

You must consider the following factors if you want your content to appear faster on search engines. 

1. Know your Audience

Your audience is one of the critical factors you need to consider if you want to master how to write content that will rank high on search engines.

You should not be a general writer. You must have a niche and specialize in that field only. You must also identify the audience’s challenges in that niche and write about the solutions.

You should also identify your audience’s interests, age, gender, demographics and qualifications. This will help you choose words and jargon in your writing.

For example, if I want to write about “how to bake a cake,” the first thing I will do is ask myself the following questions and provide answers to them.

Question: 1. Who is my audience 

Answer: those who want to learn how to bake a cakes.

Question:2? What is their age?

Answers: Those who want to learn this skill should be young adults and youth between the age of 18- 45

Question 3:What is my demography?

Answer: From my keyword research, I’ve found out that a lot of people are searching for this topic in my country 

Question 4: Gender

Answer: Both males and females might be interested in learning how to bake a cake

Question 5: Audience’s Qualification and Educational Background 

Answer: People with low and higher levels of educational background might be searching for this, so I will use  words that both of them will understand

Answering these self-asked questions will help you write content that will resonate with your audience. 

2. What they Know

Most times while writing your content, don’t assume that your audience knows nothing except they want to find out everything about the content from scratch. 

Not every piece of content involves a thorough explanation, so you should be able to build your content from what they know.

When you start explaining everything from scratch, your readers will become bored reading your content because they assume you need to give them what they are searching for, wasting their precious time.

When these website visitors leave your website because of inaccurate or boring content, it will affect your ranking, and Google will consider this a bounce rate.

For example, if I want to write about “how to bake a cake,” there should be no need for me to define and explain the meaning of cake to the reader, as they already know it. They want to know “how to bake a cake,” not “what is a cake.”

3. What they Want to Know

This is precisely what they want to know about the content. You are to provide every detail they want to make them read more.

You are to provide quality and captivating content to keep users spending more time on your website. The longer a user spends on your website, the longer the session duration which significantly affects Google’s ranking.

You can use images, videos, captivating infographics and illustrations to explain your content in detail.

4. What they need to Know

Before writing about what they want to know, make sure you write briefly about what they need to know; it will go a long way in helping them understand the content better.

What the user needs to know about a piece of content is crucial and should be included in the introduction to develop their interest in reading the content further.

The introductory part of your content is the first part your audience will see once they visit your website, and you are to provide them with what they may need to be made aware of to make them develop an interest and read further.

Let’s still assume I want to write about” how to bake a cake.” I can explain to them first the different kinds of cakes, their constituents, and the ingredients involved before letting them know how to make them.

5. Write with Uniqueness and Originality 

Write with originality and a touch of uniqueness. When your content is unique and original, Google will find it valuable and relevant to your audience.

You also need to write with experience, expertise, authority and trust. Doing this will make people see you as a professional in your industry/niche.

Remember, there is someone already ranking for the content you are ranking for, and the only way you can beat them and appear first on the search result is to apply the 10X Content Strategy.

Never make use of AI to generate your content, as your content will NEVER rank.

6. Format your Content 

Format your content to be mobile-friendly and readable to your audience. Write in simple terms with proper paragraphing.

Each paragraph should come with a single idea, be shorter with an average of 25 words per paragraph, and use double spacing when starting a new section.

After writing your content, ensure to edit and optimize it before publishing using Grammarly, Hemingway or other content optimization software. 

7. Use your Focus Keyword in Strategic Position 

When writing your content, ensure you use your focus keywords in strategic positions; this will make search engines crawl and index it faster.

Some of the positions you should use your focus keywords are:

• Title
• Metal description 
• H1 tag
• Image alt tag
• URL

8.Build Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links you use on your website when writing and publishing content. It could be internal or external links.

Internal links are links that interconnect with the different pages of your website; when this is done, individuals who use your website will have the opportunity to visit the other pages of your website, thereby increasing your session duration.

Also the External links interconnect your website to other websites and help you build a domain authority.

All these links are necessary to rank your website. Ideally, you should have at least five links within your content.

You can build quality Backlinks using some software like Semrush

9.Add and Optimize Images 

Add a featured image to your content and optimize it by adding your focus keyword in the image and alt titles.

You can also add images to each subheading of your content. Adding images makes your content visually captivating. Avoid adding stock images; use self-generated images.

10.Focus on Content-Length

Longer and explicit content is more likely to rank better in search engines because it covers a more comprehensive depth.

Google highly recognizes high-quality content that explains everything in detail; however, you should not make your content very lengthy if it will become boring.

One way to determine your content length is to look at the content length of your competitor who is currently ranking top of the search engine. To stand a chance of getting ranked, our content length should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.

Final Thought 

Writing SEO-friendly content is one of the things you need to do after keyword research. If done properly and followed correctly, you are on your way to becoming an important person in your niche.

Before creating content, always study your competitors who appear in the top five on the search engine result page; with this, you will have an idea of how to structure your content to beat them.

Always endeavour to monitor your content after publishing to track and measure your success. Once your content starts ranking, you will begin to experience a lot of organic traffic, which will make your website more authoritative and influential.